In the manufacture of paper on a Fourdrinier papermaking machine, the furnish or slurry of fibers is deposited on a traveling endless belt or wire which passes around a set of rolls. In recent years, the papermaking belts, known generally as forming fabrics, have been formed from a length of fabric which is either woven endless or woven flat with its ends seamed together to form an endless belt. The size of the forming fabrics will vary with the size of the papermaking machine, but it is not uncommon to provide forming fabrics having a circumferential length of 200 or more feet and a width of up to 30 or more feet. Once the fabrics have been manufactured, they must be packaged for shipment and storage, which has presented numerous problems, particularly since it is imperative to prevent the fabric from being creased since creases can adversely affect the performance of the fabric on the papermaking machine. Creases tend to wear more rapidly and also mark the sheet of paper being produced.
The current technique for packing and storing forming fabrics comprises the rolling of the fabric on poles or cores formed from paper or fiberboard, plastic or metal. FIGS. 1 and 2 of the drawings illustrate the standard technique utilized to roll forming fabrics for shipment and storage. As seen in FIG. 1, the cores 1 and 3 are inserted at each end inside the fabric loop, the core 2 being placed on the outside of the fabric loop adjacent the core 1. The fabric is then rolled about the two cores 1 and 2, whereupon the core 3 is positioned to form a triangular configuration, the rolled fabric being shown in FIG. 2.
While the type of packaging just described has been widely used in the industry, it nonetheless has presented a number of problems. For example, to obtain the desired triangular configuration, it is often necessary to space apart the cores 1 and 2 on which the fabric is rolled by means of spacers at each end of the cores. Such spacing at the end of the cores leads to the cores bowing toward each other at their centers. Such bowing results in creases in the fabric due to the fact that the fabric will be slack in the center and hence will crease unless extreme care is taken by the persons rolling the fabric. In addition, in order to obtain the desired triangular configuration, it may be necessary to roll the fabric several times before the proper distance is established between the cores 1 and 2 so that core 3 may be seated between them. The more a fabric is handled, the greater become the chances of inducing creases.
In accordance with the present invention, both of the aforementioned causes of creases in fabrics are eliminated, the first by eliminating the non-parallel double core, and the second by eliminating the need for a triangular package.